Jason Costomiris writes: > On 11 Apr 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!! > > > > Teco. > > Bwah. Real men edit with cat, sed, awk, head and tail. Better yet, they > write directly to the disk with a hex sector editor. >
sed, head AND tail? Isn't that a bit extravagent? head -4 f == sed 4q f Actually, if you have awk I don't think you need sed. Here's head and tail with awk Head() { awk "(NR > $1) {exit} {print}" $2 } Tail() { n=`wc -l $2 | awk "{print \\$1 - $1}"` awk "( NR < $n ) {next} {print}" $2 } The syntax is a little different, use Head 4 f instead of head -4 f % Head 4 f line 1 line 2 line 3 line 4 % Tail 4 f line 6 line 7 line 8 line 9 line 10 % If you have tac, tail is much easier: % tac f | Head 4 - | tac line 7 line 8 line 9 line 10 %